


Namesakes

by Istezada



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Sass-fest, Slow Burn, a thing of sass and feels, slowest of burns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-24 01:52:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 9,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13800873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Istezada/pseuds/Istezada
Summary: In which a blacksmith falls in love with an adventurer and vice versa.





	1. Year 1—A Question

**Author's Note:**

> Look. This is backstory for my D&D character. I don't expect anyone outside of my D&D group to care, but Asel and Hadda are absurd and adorable and I love them.
> 
> So here. Enjoy.

“How many names do you have, High Elf?”

The question fairly dripped with disbelief and melted scorn and Aselgildulthar felt his lips twitch into a smile as he quirked an eyebrow over his shoulder at the woman standing in his smithy. “More than you, Human,” he retorted and turned the piece of steel over in the forge.

Hadda grinned back at him. She looked so much better than she had at the darkening of Winter, now that her wounds had mostly healed. The coming of Spring helped too. Life wanted to live in Spring and needed less encouragement. 

“No shit, Asel. My parents actually loved me and didn’t want me to spend half an hour writing my name.” She strolled through the coal dust and scrap metal on the ground and perched on a spare anvil. “Seriously. How many names?”

Her limp was almost gone. She’d be wandering off on another adventure soon, the slow turning of the world and the gods’ subtle machinations not fast enough for her.

Aselgildulthar pulled the steel from glowing coals and set it on his anvil, adjusting the grip of the tongs as automatically as he breathed and sweated. “Two to nine, depending,” he said, before returning to the rhythm of rising and falling hammers, cooling steel, and the satisfaction of bending the bones of the earth to his will. Small bones, admittedly. Fragments of bones.

He didn’t think of himself by the name given him by his fathers, these days. Granted, it hadn't even been a century since he left Lynathalia and set out to see what had been called “mortal realms”, back home. (He’d never been able to figure that one out. It wasn’t like no one died in Lynathalia.) But regardless, these days he was just Aselgildulthar Trenar, a well-respected smith who apparently lacked any business acumen, given that he continued to not move to Treysil where he could add nobles and other wealthy idiots to his customer base. He liked being that person. It was much more interesting than who he’d been raised to be. 

Hadda, though, had caught him signing his name to a letter in the only tavern in Hurtlepool. It was to his older sister, who liked the stuffiness and formalities, so he’d taken the time to include all of his names in his, very proper, closure of the correspondence. Seven names took a while to write, even with almost three centuries of practice.

When he looked up from his work again, several minutes later, Hadda was still sitting there, still wearing her usual half-mocking smirk. At least this time there was an air of confusion for added seasoning.

“It’s called a bellows,” he explained, pumping the aforesaid machine to keep his coals hot. One of these days, he was going to have to take another apprentice. It’d been almost fifteen years since the last one.

She rolled her eyes and propped her chin on a hand that still trembled a little. “Fascinating.”

“Mm hmm.”

Hadda had, he was certain, started spending time in his smithy because it was the one place in town that would predictably be well-heated, regardless of the weather outside. Deep wounds didn’t tend to like the cold, even after they were healed, but during the healing process the ache was so much worse. As the months had passed, the quality of her silences had changed, easing from anger and despair to contemplative resignation and occasional contentment—not that her temper had gotten any longer.

He grinned at her.

“Goat,” she muttered.

“Maaaaaaaaaaa,” he bleated and was gratified to see her almost lose her perch with startled laughter.

“What?” she demanded and then threw up a hand. “I heard you. Don’t… don’t do that again.”

He grinned, wiping damp silver hair from his forehead, and began pounding holes in the door hinge he was working on.

“How do you have two to nine names? Do they change with the season? Your mood? Do they lengthen with the daylight? Do they wax and wane with Shadrimm?”

The elegance of that last, dizzying concept left him unexpectedly breathless and imagining the torment he would have wrought on his teachers with the amount of leeway granted with the increasing and decreasing length of days made him stifle what were, undeniably, giggles.

“You are possibly the strangest fellow I’ve ever met, even for an Elf,” Hadda grumbled. “Seriously, how does that even work?”

“It takes centuries of practice to achieve true oddity, even for an Elf.” She scowled up at him and he chuckled, taking the hinge over to a bucket of oil to quench. “I was given six names, when I was born. With my father’s name, that make seven. When I left Linthalla,” he used the local Human variant of the proper name for the kingdom, “I… well. People unaccustomed to Elven tongues have enough trouble with Aselgildulthar, I thought it would be courteous to shorten my surname to something more manageable, which makes eight. You, on the other hand, are apparently incapable of pronouncing my proper name, so you’ve shortened it to Asel, which makes nine.”

She blinked at him.

“Technically, I suppose Asel Trenar is still only two names, so possibly it would be more accurate to say I have two to seven names.” He shrugged and tossed the hinge piece to a pile of similar pieces on his workbench.

For several minutes she said nothing, her left hand slowly kneading at her right side.

“What’s it mean?”

“What does what mean?”

“Aselgil-whatsit.”

Aselgildulthar straightened from inspecting a cooking pot that had been left with him along with a complaint of leakage and leveled his most regally offended glare upon the woman.

This time she did fall off the anvil.

And he almost dropped the pot, which would not have improved its ability to hold water. Hadda Canlon had the most infectious laugh of any person he’d ever met in his life.

“Someday, maybe I’ll tell you,” he said, once they were both capable of speech again.

She grunted irritably but accepted the answer. It was nice, to have someone who would ask questions of the village oddity. It was nice, to have someone who, occasionally, didn’t mind if he didn’t answer.


	2. Year 1—A Picnic

“What’s your favorite name?” she asked, following him up the path to the pool at the base of a small tumble of a waterfall. In the darkness of the forest, she couldn’t see as well as he, so he led the way and warned of tripping hazards.

“That depends on the thing being named,” he answered, ears twitching in confusion.

Something (he was pretty sure it was a pebble) flicked the back of his head. “Do all of your people like being deliberately obtuse?”

“Do all of your people like asking such vague questions?”

“It’s a way to pass the time. We have competitions sometimes.”

“That does not surprise me in the least.”

They walked in relative silence for a while. Hadda was light on her feet, for a Human, especially now that she had her strength back. When they reached the opening in the trees and stepped back out into moonslight, she slid past him with an audible sigh of relief and paused, tipping her face up to the moons.

Her body might be healed. The Eldathyn said her nightmares were finally easing. She still hated and feared darkness with a lingering passion that roused his anger in ways that he hadn’t felt in decades and the Eldathyn would certainly not approve of. The fact that she’d agreed to come with him to the waterfall that gave Hurtlepool its name, at night, stoked that fury and simultaneously reminded him how fragile life was.

Silently, he inspected the ground and shifted rocks and fallen twigs out of the way before unrolling the pair of blankets he’d brought and settling them on the patchy moss and packed dirt on the bank of the stream. After a mile and a half under the shadow of the trees, the least he could do was give her time to relax into the light of the moons again. By the time he’d unpacked everything, she was ready to move again and crouch beside him.

“You brought a picnic,” she said flatly. “Isn’t this supposed to be a holy waterfall or whatever?”

“Slaughter of invading ants aside, can you think of a more peaceful activity than picnicking under the moons? I don’t think she’ll mind.” 

Hadda grunted and dropped to sit on the nearest blanket, so he shifted to the other one. Which, apparently, turned her grunt into another grunt, but this one was pretending not to be laughter. “I never know when your High Elven scruples and dignity will show up.”

In interests of retaining a suitable sense of formality, he stuck his tongue out at her. “I can’t very well nobly sacrifice my blanket later if we start the evening by sharing it,” he pointed out.

“Ah. This is one of those subtle, long-reaching plans of the Elven kin that I’ve heard of.”

“Absolutely. Hungry?”

“… Yeah, actually.”

She sounded startled, so he sent her to fill the mugs from his pack with water while he unwrapped the crusty meat pies he’d tucked against a slab of soapstone to keep warm. She returned with mugs of impossibly cold water and they ate.

“This is really good,” she said after a few bites.

“Good,” he said in response.

After they finished, she squinted at him through the shadows. “I meant your names, Asel” she said, licking crumbs from her fingers. “What’s your favorite of your names?”

“I use Aselgildulthar,” he pointed out.

Her head tilted, black braid sliding over her shoulder at the movement. “I’ve noticed.” She nodded.

And kept squinting at him.

What was it with Hadda Canlon and her fascination with names that she could neither pronounce nor understand? He hadn’t heard his names spoken since he left home, except by himself, twice, when introducing himself to someone who required unnecessary pomp.

When he didn’t answer, Hadda flopped backwards onto her blanket, without a sign of her previous graceful movements, and gazed up at the stars and the pale green sliver of Nisbael visible over the tree-line.

“Are you hiding from someone or just hiding?” she asked next.

He blinked at her and rolled down to prop himself on an elbow. The question was unexpected, and somehow managed to be both completely ridiculous and perfectly understandable. “I could go home, if I wanted to,” he answered slowly, watching her not look at him. “I’m here because I got bored. I could go back, but I don’t want to and I doubt they miss me over much.”

“You got bored.”

“Yes.”

“So you moved from,” one hand lifted and waved vaguely, indicating everything she didn’t know about Lynathalia and Ruanae, “your unimaginably luxurious life in High Elf society to be an absurdly competent smith in a backwater hell-hole like Hurtlepool. Because you were bored.”

“Don’t insult the waters of the Green Goddess,” he said primly, hiding the sting of offense he felt on behalf of Hurtlepool. “They heal people. They healed you.”

She rolled her eyes, but then actually sat up and addressed the waterfall. “My apologies. I’m sure you’re very lovely. Even if your village is about as interesting as a midsummer festival held in a graveyard.”

Aselgildulthar collapsed onto his back, laughing helplessly. “To… to be fair, a midsummer festival held in a graveyard sounds fascinating and probably much too interesting to the wrong sort of people.”

“Hmmm.” Hadda stroked her chin. “As interesting as watching a goat race?”

“You have seen the local wild goats, right? The ones that come up to my shoulder when standing on all four feet?”

“Ah yes. You and your creepy local wildlife.”

“You are terrible at metaphors.”

“They’re very good metaphors. They just don’t apply to the current situation.”

“I like living in Hurtlepool.”

“Yes, but why? Sock!” she blurted suddenly and shook a finger at the stream. “Your village is as interesting as a sock.”

He smiled again, but didn’t follow the distraction. “Why are you so obsessed with other people’s pasts?”

He saw her mouth twist in silhouette before she nodded and turned her body to face him properly. “Where I come from, names mean things. They’re…” Her gaze fell away with her words. For several long minutes, she stared at her hands as they trembled against the weave of the blanket. “Hadda is a kind of tree that grows around Treefather’s Eyes. My father planted one when I was born. It’s probably still there.” 

The smile she gave her hands was a small thing. Private. In response to something only Hadda could see. “My mother loved them.” The twinkle in her eyes when she looked up, though, was wicked and demanded that he be let in on her amusement. “I was never very impressed, since my tree wasn’t big enough to climb.”

Aselgildulthar pressed a horrified hand to his breast. “How dreadful.”

“It was a silly tree.” Her smile faded and she looked away again, past him to the shadows of the forest this time. “I don’t know. It was a silly tree. But it’s my name and it’s still there, rooted in the ground where I grew up, no matter where I am in the world.”

Slowly, he nodded. “My father and his father and… We’re Elves, so just assume millennia?”

“So weird.”

“They’re historians. Bards. Both? Have been for almost as long as Linthallia has existed.”

She considered that for a while. “Wait. Your unimaginably luxurious life was just studying mountains of books and things?”

Never mind that his grandparents would cower in rage at the idea of treating the records like that. He shrugged and nodded again. “And learning epochs worth of epics, yes.” And all the other scholarly subjects the third scion of a noble house was expected to master. And weapons training. And weapon and armor smithing, which was how he’d ended up here. Somehow, he suspected that the foundational classes of “This is how you enchant a weapon” weren’t supposed to result in the pupils abandoning polite society and running off to live with vulgar humans and the ilk that lived with them.

“Huh.” The twinkle was back when she smirked at him. “So you were a stuffed-shirt academic sort of High Elf?”

Looking down one’s nose at someone while lying down was an art that only stuffed-shirt sorts of High Elves could manage, academic or otherwise, or so he liked to think. “I,” he said as loftily as he could, “am the third son of the house of Trenaritryn, historians to Rilynn Zaezara. My shirts were very well tailored, thank you very much.”

“I have no idea who Rilynn Za… what you just said. Who is that?”

He sighed and sat up. There was no reason to tell her. There was no reason _not_ to tell her. He just wished he could make up his mind one way or the other. He’d gotten used to his life in Hurtlepool as the village oddity. On the other hand, it was nice to not be a solitary oddity. Hadda had never been very good at being awed by the High Elf working in the smithy, unlike most people who passed through Hurtlepool. She was remarkably bad at being impressed by anything or anyone. It was far too charming. And she’d probably leave town with one of the next caravans heading to Treysil. 

“Thatahlatria Zaezara is the queen of Lynathalia, Hadda,” he said, not looking at her. “Rilynn Zaezara, the house of Zaezara, has held the throne for longer than Amana has existed as a political entity. My family have been the holders and tellers of the history of the kingdom since the second Zaezara monarch.”

“You’re a noble stuffed-shirt academic sort of High Elf.” She amended her earlier description, voice as flat and dull as a knife blank, and he couldn’t quite stop his ears from flattening against the sides of his head a little.

“My family is, yes.”

“I have no idea what to do with that.”

“There is not much to do with it. It just is. I was born there, given seven names to live up to, and ran off to do everything but.”

She nodded.

She nodded, but the companionable silence was shattered into something with sharp edges, glinting in the moonslight.


	3. Year 1—An Answer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I know it's short.

“Do they grow here? Your trees?”

Hadda didn’t look up from her work as her brown fingers, the color of road-dust at sunset, worked oil into the leathers of her armor. “What?” She hadn’t flinched at his approach. He wasn’t sure if that meant he’d remembered to walk loudly or if her mind and soul were finally, finally, healing to match her body.

“The Hadda trees. The one your father planted when you were born. Do they grow here?”

She did look at him then, eyes narrowed quizzically. “No,” she said after studying him for several seconds, dismissal stark in her tone. One hand moved, fingers dipping a fresh swipe of grease out of a small pot at her side and lifting again to begin applying it to her armor.


	4. Year 1—A Realization

She left Hurtlepool near midsummer, heading to Treysil to look for someone in need of her abilities. The Eldathyn shook his head regretfully, sad that he could not bring her to the comfort and peace of the Goddess of Singing Waters. Several of the matrons of the town declared they were glad she was gone and hadn’t taken any of the young men with her. Several of the young women flirted more confidently with the aforementioned young men.

Aselgildulthar worked.

He regretted that she had not come to know and love Eldath. He was glad the youngsters of this village had not followed her moth to the flame of adventure. He had been a moth and been singed and was grateful to have landed, at last, in Hurtlepool.

He worked. He’d like to be able to say that it was easier not to miss her while he worked, but that was a lie. After so many decades spent sweating over an anvil, his body did his work and his specific attention was only required for the split second when hammer met metal. (That was also a lie, but an easier one to get away with.) Besides, her favorite perch of his spare anvil sat where it always did.

Empty.

Without her taunting amusement and refusal to be awed by him and his silver hair, gold-flecked eyes, and long, pointed ears. Without her grim patience as she recovered from injury and near death. Without her questions and answers. Without her…

Without her.

His hammer clattered from his hand to the anvil and he had to snatch it up again before the handle caught fire against the glowing iron there.

“Holy Mother Guardian of Groves,” he muttered, awed by his own stupidity.

In less than a single, short year, he’d fallen in love. With a Human. Probably it was only appropriate to fall in love with a Human so quickly. The short-lived races did everything quickly. They had to.

“My dear father,” he said, flourishing his hammer to the empty smithy, “I write to inform you that your worst fears have come to pass. My time spent in Amana, now ruled by rash humans, has irreparably damaged my good judgement and made me leap into things without careful thought. Only imagine, I’ve fallen in love with a woman after knowing her only seven months.”

Picturing his father’s reaction, Aselgildulthar couldn’t help chuckling, but the anvil on the other side of the smithy still sat there, empty, and he knew why the tales of the Eldalië warned against loving people who could be born and die of old age in only a fraction of the life-span of an Elf. Now that he had a name for it, the dull, vacant ache in his chest solidified into something that was both breathtakingly painful and overwhelming in melancholy beauty.

He loved her and she was gone.

“Damn.”

Really, someone should bottle his stupidity and sell it as… well, bottled stupidity. Scholars everywhere could experience what it was like to be an idiot.


	5. Year 2—An Apology

“Got a horse that needs shoeing,” Hadda said, leaning against the wall that opened into his yard.

Aselgildulthar nearly dropped his hammer again. “I… um… I do that,” he said.

She squinted at him. “I know that, High Elf. That’s why I brought her here.”

It was remarkable, the way she could make “High Elf” sound like “dumb-ass”.

Right.

Um.

You were trained for over a century in court manners. You can sound like an intelligent person. “Is it urgent or can I…?” he gestured at the wagon axle he was in the process of straightening.

“No, it’s fine. Came in with the caravan from Shadin. We’re stopping overnight.”

He nodded.

She looked good. Alive. He’d worried that she would just disappear into the mysteries of the world and he’d never even find out what happened to her. But here she was in the windy Spring afternoon, hair cut short and blowing wild around her face. She wore different armor than she’d left in, almost a year ago, but her sword was the same. A line of new, pink skin ran down one side of her jaw and he felt a shiver run down his spine…

That ended abruptly when he realized she was staring at him with a quirked eyebrow.

“Ye-es?” she asked, drawing the word out to make her point.

She wasn’t staring at him. She was staring _back_ at him.

Damn.

He’d spent months, thinking about what he’d say if he ever saw her again. And in the face of her presence, all he could do was look away and go back to work.

“Bring her back to the encampment when you’re done for the day, Asel. No hurry.”

He nodded, not trusting himself to meet her gaze again and cursing himself for his cowardice as he listened to her walk away over the sounds of his hammer-falls. Goddess of Singing Waters, he’d never felt less at peace in his entire life.

Later, after the moons had risen, he led the mare to the outskirts of town where the caravan was set up to pass the night.

“What’s your business here?” a towering guard growled through a thick accent and what Aselgildulthar swore were tusks glinting in the faint moonslight.

Aselgildulthar wasn’t entirely sure what the caravan thought they were guarding against, given where they were and who the local people worshipped, but he lifted his hands peaceably. “Hadda left this mare to be shod. I’m just returning her and hoping to get paid.”

The guard sniffed. No, really. He sniffed, like a bear scenting prey, and stepped closer to glance the horse over. “Second fire,” he said grudgingly. “You’ll find her there.”

“Thank you, sir.” Aselgildulthar nodded politely and stepped past, ignoring a second sniff that was more of a snort.

Hadda sprawled on her back, head pillowed on a piece of firewood. Feet propped one atop the other, her toes bounced and twisted in time to the music played by a gray-bearded Dwarf perched on the tongue of a nearby wagon. The notes tumbled out of the violin like a mountain stream and he would sooner have learned to fly than interrupt. For an indescribable time, he stood, watching and listening, until the Dwarf brought her performance to a flashing flourish of notes that soared higher than the treetops of the nearby forest.

“So. What d’you want, Elf?” the musician demanded, setting her bow aside to grab the mug next to her and take a drink.

Hadda sat up, startled, one hand landing on the hilt of her sword before her eyes actually found him standing on the edge of the firelight.

“To return a horse, get paid, and thank you for the music. Dwarf.” He quirked an eyebrow at the musician and bowed. “Aselgildulthar Trenar, at your service.”

“Huh,” she said and wiped down her violin. “Barmir Orepike, at yours. This the smith you told us about, Hadda?”

“This would be the pointy-eared, silver-haired asshole, yes,” Hadda stood up, leaving her sword behind, and came over. “She behaved for you then?”

“That foot’s a little bruised, so I wouldn’t use her for riding, if you have the stock to rotate.” He squinted at her. “Pointy-eared, silver-haired asshole? Really?”

Her lips twitched, but she just shrugged and dug in her pockets for coin. “What else do you call someone who refuses to make polite conversation with a woman?”

“An idiot,” he said promptly.

“Ooo! Now I have options.”

Gods, he’d missed seeing the way light caught in her eyes when she laughed at him. He grinned helplessly down at her. “I’m sure I could come up with a few more, if you want.”

“Oh, now you’re making conversation?”

“Trying. Failing miserably. I’m better at making things. This is for you.”

That was, quite possibly, the most horrifically awkward segue in the history of recorded civilization. And it was too late to do anything about it. The heat on his face now had nothing to do with burning coal or exertion and everything to do with… sweet Mother of Serenity… he offered his free hand across the space between them.

She blinked, one hand still in her pocket. “What?”

Aselgildulthar swallowed and repeated himself. “This is for you. From the pointy-eared, silver-haired asshole. It’s… an apology. Part of an apology. Um.”

Slowly, she reached to pick up the object in his palm, replacing it with a few coins for his work with the horse. “You made me… you made this?” She turned slightly to allow more firelight to fall on them.

“Yes,” he said simply, watching her fingertips run over the gryphon-shaped cloak pin in her hands.

“It’s beautiful.” She eyed him quizzically. “This is an apology? For what?”

“Being an idiot?”

“I figured that much. How is this an apology?”

He hesitated, aware of the Dwarf grinning widely on the other side of the campfire. But her presence was, in the end, irrelevant. He would owe this apology to Hadda if they were standing in the middle of the royal court of Lynathalia with Queen Thatahlatria and his entire family looking on.

Well. He didn’t owe her anything. But he wanted to apologize.

“Aselgildulthar,” he said, “means ‘mountain glade of the gryphon-friend’. Asel is ‘mountain’.” It was a loose translation, but it would work. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before.”

He wanted to apologize for so much and he had no idea how or if he was allowed, at this point.

“Scrawniest mountain I’ve ever seen,” Barim announced when Hadda didn’t reply. “Turn the Duchess loose with the others, Hadda. I’ll fill up my mug, and then we can get back to music.”

Hadda looked away from him, laughter gone from her eyes, back to the Dwarf. “Sounds good,” she said. “Have a good night, Asel.”

He stifled his wince and repeated his earlier bow. “Good night."


	6. Year 2—A Name

The next time she came through Hurtlepool, she was alone and running a message from a merchant in Treysil to someone in another city hundreds of miles away.

“It’s good pay,” she said to her mug of beer.

It was only midday when she stopped, but she took a room at the tavern for the night anyway.

“The horse needs rest, and I can’t change it out for another two days. No offense to the horses around here.”

Aselgildulthar’s lips twitched. She’d stuck her head in the door and asked if he was hungry and then left again before he could answer. “You can insult the horses, I don’t care.”

“Ah. It’s just the water that I have to be polite to around here.”

“They are her waters, after all.”

She looked at him sideways, but nodded. “So what’s with the sword?”

It took him a moment to figure out what she was talking about. “Oh. I was cleaning it this morning before things got busy.”

“Yours?”

He shrugged and smeared a little jam on his bread. “I haven’t always been a blacksmith.”

Hadda blinked as if the thought had never occurred to her, conversations about his rearing in Lynathalia notwithstanding. “I… No, I meant, did you make it?”

“Yes.”

“Huh.” She frowned thoughtfully while tearing meat off the rabbit leg in front of her. “You’re…”

“Skilled? Yes. Thank you.”

She snorted and threw a bone at him. “How did you end up here? You’re not… I mean you are old, I assume, but not for an Elf.”

Oh. That. He dropped the rabbit bone onto his plate. “I like living here. It’s… quiet. Peaceful.”

“You don’t seem like a quiet person, Asel.”

“Maybe that’s why I like it.”

A muscle in her jaw twitched, but she nodded again. “Is it weird that that actually makes perfect sense?”

“It took a while. Eldath is… very patient.”

“She’d have to be,” Hadda muttered, “dealing with you.”

He grunted a startled laugh around a mouthful of bread and almost choked on crumbs. “True.” When he could breathe again, and she’d stopped laughing at him and offering to pour the contents of his mug down his throat to "help wash the bread out of his lungs”, he tilted his head at her. “I spent a while offering my sword and my services to whoever wanted to pay me to wander around the countryside. It’s a good way to explore the world. For me, it was an efficient way to lose friends.”

She grimaced and took a long swallow of her ale.

“Eventually, I got tired of it and settled here. They still die, but usually it’s slower and doesn’t involve tree monsters or owlbears or orcs.” He nodded to where the tavern owner was hacking apart another rabbit. “I knew Simon’s parents. I was here when his mother told his father she was pregnant. The man almost fainted and then broke a table, dancing on it.”

Hadda chuckled softly at that.

“I like it here.”

“Fair enough. You do make beautiful swords though.”

He laughed, following her change of subject. “I do, don’t I? Would you care to buy one?”

“Maybe next time. Mine is still doing well enough for me.” She patted the sword hilt at her side.

The next morning, when he came to stoke the coals in the early morning chill, there was a small, flat package sitting on his anvil. Written on it, in unpracticed Elvish letters, was “Aselgildulthar”.

“… Interesting,” he said and left it alone while he built up the fire and lit a lantern. Bringing the latter over, he studied the package curiously. And warily. It had been a while, admittedly, but he’d picked up his share of cursed or otherwise trapped items in his time. In interests of not doing so again, he left the package where it was and went back into his rooms to dig a book from the bottom of the trunk it had lain in for decades.

Thus reinforced, he returned and carefully, with lots of double-checking his notes, cast a spell to identify any magic inherent to the package.

There was no magic. It was just a small package of heavy folded paper, tied shut with a string.

“Huh.”

He took the book back inside. It had survived worse than a little coal soot, but the last thing he needed was someone to wander in to buy nails and discover it sitting around. Once that was taken care of, however, he picked up the package and untied the string.

Inside the carefully folded paper was an intact sprig of dried leaves from a tree he didn’t recognize. And written in the Human tongue, in a much more casual hand, was her name.

Hadda.


	7. Year 3—A Blessing

The harvest was just finished. The wagons bearing Hurtlepool’s tithe to Lord Ianren’s storehouses had left two days ago. And bless the Grain Goddess for holding back the rains until everything was in from the fields and safely gathered into barrels, lofts, ricks, and cellars against the coming Winter. It had been a good year, for the most part, and a dry harvest meant snow-hunger was held off that much longer.

Now? Now the road outside was more puddle than dirt and no one cared. Not really. Not yet.

“I know I’m not supposed to complain about the water around here,” Hadda said, stepping under the shelter of his smithy roof before shoving the hood of her cloak back away from her face and shaking her head briskly, “but this is just excessive.”

“… and six coppers, Mistress Varie.” Aselgildulthar finished, but he couldn’t stop the grin that spread across his face.

Mistress Varie, the white-haired matriarch of the second largest farm around Hurtlepool, sniffed disdainfully, before reaching up to pat his cheek, as if she was his grandmother and not more than two centuries younger than he. “Worth every penny, my boy.” Her green eyes glanced past him at Hadda and then twinkled up him knowingly.

Goddess of Serenity grant that his cheeks weren’t as red as they felt.

“I see you have return customers, Master Trenar,” she said, and counted out the coin she owed him into his palm.

“That happens, on occasion.”

She snorted, tied her purse closed again, pulled her hood up, and went out, holding damp skirts out of the sooty dust of his shop. On the way past, she nudged Hadda firmly in the ribs, almost pushing her forward a step. “He’s all yours, my dear.”

“What… just happened?” Hadda asked, turning to peer through the rain at the quickly disappearing form of Mistress Varie.

“I think she just gave you her blessing to fuck me over my own anvil,” Aselgildulthar answered, as mildly as he could manage.

To his everlasting delight, Hadda’s brown cheeks turned a flaming red to match his own.

“I… that… um… oh.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, we could…”

“Hadda Canlon!”

After three years, Hadda remained a woman of undiscovered talents. She simpered. “Master Trenar?”

Mistress Varie safely vanished into the rain, Aselgildulthar didn’t bother to stifle the laughter that bubbled out in response. “It’s… good to see you again.”

She grinned briefly back at him, but then sobered as quickly as the simper had manifested. He quirked an eyebrow at her, but she simply stood and studied him for several long moments. What, exactly, she was looking for, he had no idea. At length, she sighed and shrugged. “If you don’t get your pointy-eared, silver-haired self over here and give me a hug, I’ll…”

The sentence stopped, the words vanishing and seeming to take much of her energy with them.

He blinked, glanced at the glowing coals in his forge (on the off chance they’d moved since he left them to talk to Mistress Varie), and then crossed the smithy to wrap his arms around her. Her sharp intake of breath left him in no doubt that she’d been far from certain about this course of action. But her face turned into his shoulder before he could step away and her breath eased out again after a moment, unsteady warmth curling against his chin.

Six eternal seconds passed. She made no move to hug him in return.

And then she collapsed.

It was sudden and complete enough that she almost knocked him over. For an instant, he thought she’d fainted, but by the time he’d lowered her to the ground and could look, she just blinked at him tiredly.

He did not smile at the gryphon-shaped pin holding her cloak shut. He might have blushed again though.

“Sorry,” Hadda muttered. “Didn’t mean…”

While he fumbled for words, she took a deep breath and pushed away to her knees before grabbing his shoulder to pull herself to her feet.

“When was the last time you ate?” he asked, steadying her further with his other hand.

“This morning.”

Good. Good.

Once she was upright again, if swaying slightly, he rose as well. “When was the last time you slept?”

“Fuck you, High Elf,” she snapped and yanked her hand out of his.

“As delighted as Mistress Varie would be by that development,” he mused. “Hadda.”

“Just… forget it, Asel.”

Forget the six seconds or forget the fact that she had, for a moment, trusted him enough to initiate this, whatever this was? Aselgildulthar had no intention of doing either. 

“There’s a pile of sacks in the corner over there if you don’t feel like braving the mud to get back to the tavern.” He paused to let that sink through whatever was going on in Hadda’s brain. “Gods know the beds are softer and the tavern is quieter than my shop. But I’ve… I have my share of nightmares. Sometimes it’s easier to wake up if there’s someone else to wake up to.”

“Mmm. Old coal sacks. Decadent.” She swallowed and looked at him, gaze barely softer than a glare. “You sure?”

“Very.”

Hadda went past him to the indicated heap of canvas and burlap. The familiar sounds of a sword-belt being undone and bundled flicked at old memories. So too did the weary deliberation of each of her steps. Aselgildulthar ignored the fact that he’d had longer to forget that kind of exhaustion than Hadda had been alive, and just nodded when she narrowed her eyes at him while setting her weapons between herself and the rest of the shop. He went back to his forge and got to work on a new scythe blade.


	8. Year 4—An Offer

“So, you do leave Hurtlepool and your forge.”

Aselgildulthar looked up, startled.

Hadda stood several feet away, stooping in the Dwarf-built common room of the inn, and grinned at him like she’d just found an unexpected pile of coin in her purse. 

“Shockingly enough, I do need coal and metal. And, also surprising, I get better quality here than from Treysil.”

“You can buy charcoal anywhere. I can make charcoal.”

He shrugged. “So can I.”

She dropped to sit across the table from him. This particular inn couldn’t be bothered to provide Elf-sized tables, but there were a few of the regular Dwarven tables that had been surrounded by tough cushions to adjust Dwarven furniture for taller patrons. It was a little awkward until you got used to it, but it worked. The beds, on the other hand, were just annoying.

“Do they charge you more?”

What? Oh, that. “For being an Elf, you mean?”

She nodded, looking curious. “I only traveled with Barim for a year or so, but she blamed everything on Elves, if she could get away with it.”

… This ought to be interesting. Aselgildulthar turned on his cushion and waved at the Dwarf behind the bar. “Humri, do folk around here charge me more because I’m an Elf?”

“Hells no, slag-brain. We charge you more because you’re a fucking honorable asshole, and we don’t actually have an excuse to kill you.”

“You keep telling yourself that, Humri.” He looked wryly back at Hadda and quirked an eyebrow. “Questions?”

One hand rubbed at her face until she got her smile under control. “So many.”

“I got someone killed. His people live here.”

Hadda blinked. Apparently, that hadn’t been an explanation she’d expected. “So you come _here_ for your smithing supplies? We’re two weeks’ travel from Hurtlepool.”

“I know where we are, Hadda.”

She studied him quizzically. “You’re weird. Even for a High Elf.”

As grim as he always felt, coming here to restock for the year, he couldn’t help the smile that crept out for her bluntness.

Her lips curled in acknowledgement, both of his smile and... “Want some company on the ride home?”

He blinked. Apparently, that hadn’t been an offer he’d expected. “That would be… Yes. I would.”

One brown hand uncurled on the table, half-opening in a gesture like a shrug. “Sometimes it’s easier to wake up from the nightmares if there’s someone else to wake up to.”


	9. Year 5—A Fight

“Stay.”

Hadda went very still where she’d turned to mount her horse, reins clenched in a suddenly white-knuckled fist and her spine straight as a plumb-line.

She’d come into town two days ago, as gaunt as her horse. The ice and snows were melting, but the first sign of new green was weeks away still. Even the tavern was running low on supplies. She’d stayed and appropriated his smithy as a warm place to sit and stare at the floor or napped fitfully in the corner. She’d eaten and slept and, as far as he knew, her mount had done the same. The two of them didn’t look noticeably better for the respite.

In two days, she’d said less than two dozen words.

“Please,” he said softly.

“Why?”

He remembered the young woman Master Joram found on the edge of his fields five years ago, how pale she’d been while the Eldathyn fought to get her to regain consciousness. The way she, once she woke up and began slowly moving around the village, had showered him with casual impudence while gratefully basking in the warmth from his forge. Hurtlepool had accepted him long ago, but he’d forgotten how much fun it was to simply play with someone.

“I don’t belong here, Asel,” she went on before he could answer. “You know that as well as I do.”

“Because you know how to use that sword?”

She wheeled around to face him, every fragment of movement sharp and wild with passion—except the hand that held her mount’s reins, which carefully released the lines before she spun. “Because… Asel.” Her voice went hoarse over his name, but she clenched her teeth and waited until she could continue with some semblance of control. “I don’t know how many people I’ve killed, whether they deserved it or not.”

It was physically impossible for his heart to turn inside out, short of magic that he was pretty sure she didn’t possess. The stabbing sensation in his chest did its best to convince him otherwise.

“I’m good at it,” she said, the matter-of-fact statement marred by warring pride, resignation, and disgust.

“So am I.”

She stared at him, eyes as hard and honed as the blade that hung at her side. “Prove it, High Elf.”

“I’m not going to kill someone for you, Hadda.”

“I didn’t ask you to. You said you know how to use that fancy sword you have.”

So. What? She wanted to have a, mostly friendly, bout to prove she didn’t belong in Hurtlepool and couldn’t belong to the Goddess? Possibly she just wanted to hit something. He could understand that desire intimately.

Aselgildulthar huffed a laugh and nodded. “I’ll go get it.”

About an hour later, they’d found a pasture that was on high enough ground that it wasn’t sodden and gotten permission from the owner of said pasture to borrow it for a while.

“First blood or surrender?” he asked, studying her past the dancing tips of their blades.

Her lips pulled away from her teeth in a confident and predatory smile. “Surrender. Limits?”

“I don’t kill you, you don’t kill me.”

“That sounds fair.” Her blade tapped his lightly.

“I’d prefer to avoid serious injury, if possible.”

“Alive and relatively unharmed.” She shrugged acquiescence. “Anything else?”

“Nope. You?”

She shook her head.

And then squawked in the most undignified verbal display of outrage when he snapped the fingers of his off hand and a shower of sparks erupted from the air over his head and rained down around him. “You fucking, tricky, High Elf bastard!”

He grinned and gestured lightly with his sword, offering her an opening. “My parents were married, thank you…” she took the opening and their swords clashed “… very much.”

Aselgildulthar had wielded this blade for over a century. The balance of it was, deep down, more familiar to him than the heft of his hammers. On the other hand, he hadn’t actually used it for decades.

“I don’t know how many people I’ve killed either,” he said, during a pause for circling and strategizing.

“Did you, before you started living here?”

“No.”

They both bled from a few light cuts. The dead grass crunched and slid underfoot, but wasn’t dangerously treacherous. He leaped forward and then spun around her parry, past her, and slapped the back of her left shoulder with his empty hand.

She laughed, twirled her sword under her off arm, and stabbed towards him, turning as she did so.

“I’m not sure if fighting you is like fighting an old man or a boy,” she complained.

“Why pick?” He grunted as he blocked the fall of her sword toward his head. “I’m versatile.”

“What’d the sparks do?”

He grinned at her, a few straining inches away. “You don’t know.”

She was good. He knew more tricks, had more experience, but she was good and, more importantly, had more recent practice. Her sword moved like it had a mind of its own and was in perfect partnership with her. His sword felt like it had once been an extension of his arm, but now required reminders to go where he wanted it. What hesitation she showed, due to being unaccustomed to non-lethal fights, was made up for by the fact that she fought dirty.

They both fought dirty.

Steel, grass, mud, fists, feet, and hair flew.

It was, to be perfectly, serenely, gloriously honest, the most fun he’d had in years. It was also a little unsettling to discover that his brain could still slide into the old strategic patterns of finding weaknesses and poking them until his enemy bled out beneath him.

What was even more fun and unnerving, he decided when the flat of her sword bludgeoned across the backs of his knees and sent him toppling forward, was how quickly she learned and adapted. He barely caught himself from face-planting into the mud. And then she finished her movement and one foot landed solidly on his blade while the other crunched, just as solidly, into his ribs to send him sprawling onto his back in the mud.

Another thing that he remembered far too well was the unique cold of a sharp blade against his throat. “Ow,” he groaned, squinting up at her. It was, of course, impossible to pant for breath without moving his ribs. Ow. “Green Groves, Hadda.”

She grinned at him, nose and teeth bloody from where he’d punched her at some point. “Yes?” she said after swallowing hard in her own breathlessness. “Something you had to say, High Elf?” Her booted toe dug gently into his, as yet, un-kicked side.

“Marry me.”

That… wasn’t what he’d meant to say. Not that he didn’t mean it. But… now? Really?

Her eyes widened, the triumph in them drowned suddenly in shock, followed by a torrent of other emotions that came and went too quickly for him to recognize.

“Obviously," she said, voice as bland as mashed turnips.

Wait. What?

“Really?”

Her eyes narrowed. “What did the sparks do, Asel?”

He laughed, head digging back into the mud. Ow. Shit. “Don’t. Fuck. Don’t make me laugh, Hadda. Gods.”

She let her sword rest a hair more heavily, just enough to break skin. “What did they do, Asel?”

He grinned. He couldn’t help it. If there wasn’t a razor-edged blade threatening his jugular, he’d be dancing a highly undignified jig, broken ribs or not. “They looked very dramatic.”

“You…”

She glared at him. He smirked back.

“Yes. Really.” She pulled the sword away suddenly, tossing it down beside his own, and looked much younger, much more unsure of herself, than she had for years. “If you meant it.”

“I have never, in my pointy-eared, silver-haired life, meant anything more. Other than the time I coated the floor surrounding my sister’s bed in grease.”

“Wh… never mind. Yes. You asshole.”

“Oh good,” he said and dared to move one hand to hold his side. “Then come here and kiss me, Human. I have been terribly wounded.”

She snorted and dropped to the ground beside him. “I don’t know. I’ve heard stories about kisses from Elves.” She didn’t kiss him. More quietly, she said, “I meant it, Asel. I’m good at this.”

“I can tell.”

“I haven’t done anything else since I was a girl, when I ran away to join the army with my brother.”

He reached across himself to rest his hand on hers. “Which was how long ago?”

“Twelve or thirteen years.”

He closed his eyes in a long blink, both to concentrate on pulling in another breath and to give himself a moment to adjust his calendar again. Humans lived so quickly. So very quickly. If he was lucky, he’d get sixty fleeting years, and then she’d be dead and he’d have another four centuries to remember her.

“Would you like to learn something else?”

She shrugged. Then nodded. Then looked down at her hands. “Sometimes?”


	10. Year 5—A Story

“My brother loves to watch the stars.”

Hadda stirred and then buried her face in his shoulder to stifle her giggles.

“What?”

“We are spending the night in a field, under the Spring moons, because the entire fucking village insisted that this was the proper way to spend our wedding night. Instead of, y’know, in a _bed_. And you’re talking about your brother?”

“At least we have blankets…”

They were, actually, remarkably comfortable, given the whole sleeping-in-a-field thing.

She thumped his chest lightly with a fist.

“Why are you talking about your brother?”

He shook his head and pointed. “The fox.”

“Wait. The fox?” She rolled onto her back and followed the line of his arm to the stars he had seen. “Oh. Scadees’ Cat?”

“I’ve never heard it called that before. Who’s Scadees?”

“Nuh uh. You started this star nonsense, Asel. And brothers. Are we really talking about brothers tonight?”

“I am actually trying to get to a point, Hadda.”

“Ugh. Elves.”

“Your Elf.”

“Mm.”

Further discussion of celestial bodies was postponed in favor of kisses and other similarly pleasant activities.

“Mmm,” Hadda smiled at him smugly.

“You’re a very distracting person, wife,” he observed and traced down her jawline with the backs of his fingers.

“Somehow, husband, I cannot summon up appropriate levels of remorse.”

“Well no, I wasn’t expecting you to.”

“Sensible of you.” She grinned, nuzzled at his hand for a moment, and then kissed his nose before settling her head into the hollow of his shoulder again. “Right. So. Stars. The fox that isn’t a cat. Continue. I will be very…” his breath hissed out in response to where her hand was wandering, “… attentive.”

“My brother,” he said, ignoring her groan, “likes the stars and, at least when he was younger, Tadethasar was his favorite constellation.”

Hadda made a dubious noise. “Tadethasar, I assume, has some poetic meaning when translated.”

“Fox of the eternal quest, more or less.”

“See? Poetic.” Her fingernails dug in slightly and he twitched.

“Yes. Well. He managed to get it added to the string of my names when I was born.”

“What _are_ all of your names anyway, husband?”

“You’re a terrible listener.”

“I ask lots of questions!”

“My name. You… really?”

“I just married you, Asel.”

He took a deep breath. “Aselgildulthar Nimamdir Alyahal Tadethasar Lyorhalon Pyarotas Trenaritryn.”

For a moment, she lay there in complete silence, her “attentive” hand as motionless as the ground beneath them. “Wow,” she murmured eventually, the syllable drawn out and shaking with laughter. “Holy gods, that’s a name.”

“Shush, you.” He kissed the top of her head and chuckled when her hand remembered what it was doing and resumed. “According to legend, a vixen and her mate found a den and, in early Spring, she had a litter of kits. There were four of them, three male and one female, according to most. For some time, the vixen and her mate watched their kits grow and play and begin to explore outside the den. But it had been a harsh Winter and when the snows started to melt…”

Hadda pulled her hand away and rested it gently on his chest. “Were they flooded?”

He nodded. “Between the snowmelt from the mountains and the Spring rains, the water levels rose and began to flood the den. They weren’t the only ones, of course. There were badgers and snakes and all manner of other creatures, who were washed out of their burrows, and were either afraid for their own children or eager for the easy meal that a young kit would provide. Finally, they decided that the fox would lead the kits to higher ground and seek shelter for the time being, while the vixen headed out into the storms to find a new home.” 

Asel stared up at the night sky and the stars in their dance with the moons. “It’s the usual fable, mostly. She traveled for days, searching for a safe place to raise her children, but all the burrows were claimed or too close to aeries or other dangers. Finally, one night when she was far from her mate and children, she lifted her nose to the moons and begged for Selûne’s aid. The Lady of Silver had been watching, of course, and, moved by the vixen’s dedication to her family, she came down and asked the vixen what help she could give. The vixen explained her plight and the Lady offered her permission to search the heavens for a home for her kits, since there was none to be found in this world. The vixen, grateful for the goddess’ gift, but daunted by the task of wandering the empty vastnesses of the skies, begged for one more boon, which the Lady saw fit to grant.”

He fell silent, remembering the cadence of his parents’ voices, harmonizing and blending, weaving and unfolding magnificent tapestries with their words.

“What boon?” Hadda asked, her voice as soft as the touch of her fingers tracing the thin new scar on his neck.

He pointed again, this time to Firro’s plump silver disk. “The five spots, according to the story, are five crystal foxes, one large and four small, that wait in safety with the Night Traveler, while Tadethasar searches the heavens for their home.”

Hadda exhaled slowly and he smiled, despite the melancholy, glad to have someone to share it with.

“That,” she said, pulling the blankets tighter under her chin, “is lovely and a horrible story for a child, much less a wedding night.”

He chuckled. “You asked what my favorite of my names is.”

“I did? When?”

“On that picnic when you found out my family are Elven nobility.”

“Do you remember everything that’s ever happened to you?” she demanded.

“No.” He twisted his head until he could meet her eyes. And then he simpered. “Just everything about you.”

“Goat.” Her hand flew from his throat to his mouth. “Don’t.”

He grinned against her fingertips and dropped his head again, arm tightening around her back.

“Why is it your favorite?”

Asel shrugged.

“Oh no. You don’t get to tell me a beautiful, tragic, unresolved story like that, tonight, and not explain why you had to tell me. Tonight.”

That was… fair.

“Never told anyone before,” he murmured, mostly to give himself time to think of words to explain it. “Not really. Not while sober.”

“We have wine,” she pointed out. “It’s shitty wine, but it’s wine.”

“It’s cold out there, you daft woman.”

“Mmm, true.” She wriggled tighter into his side and her hand abandoned his face to be attentive elsewhere again.

“I…” How to explain _everything_? “… was an odd child.”

She stifled a snort in his chest. “No. I’m sorry. Go on.”

“Would you…” He interrupted himself with a helpless grunt. “ _Stop_ that, for a moment?”

Obediently, her hand stilled while the rest of her quivered with laughter.

“Thank you.” He considered moving the fingers that rested on her side, in retaliation, but… “I left. And I went looking. And I killed a lot of people and watched a lot more die and found a lot of things I shouldn’t have and places I shouldn’t be. I wanted my den, my own spot amidst the wide world, where I could weather the storms and… I wanted someone to offer that shelter to, to share it with me.”

“For once in my life, I get to be the boy in the story?”

Asel laughed and rolled over to face her, tangling his legs with hers. “You, Hadda, may be whatever you want. But I would…” He stopped and kissed her, just because he could and because he’d run out of words that could fit around the ache in his chest.

“Tadethasar,” she whispered against his lips. “I said ‘yes’. I’m not going anywhere. Shut up and fuck me.”

She never called him anything else, all night long.


End file.
